Conspiracy corner: Egypt is joining BRICS. Maybe this is deliberate pressure and this is a convenient excuse?
"[the] two countries almost at the brink of war with artillery guns ready to fire at Chinese tanks which were trying to storm Indian positions, a fate averted by a hotline between the two sides, reveals former Army chief Gen M.M. Naravane (Retd)" [0]
[0] - https://theprint.in/defence/nearing-breaking-point-gen-narav...
No, but their mutual dependence on the US for military procurement and defense keeps them within NATO.
China and India on the other hand began the process of a hard decoupling in 2020. Major Chinese tech companies were frozen out of the Indian market, and others were "encouraged" to sell off their operations to Indian, American, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese companies. For example, the Foxconn factory manufacturing iPhones in India was originally built for Xiaomi before they were pushed out. So was Huawei India's assets to Cisco and Vivo India's factory to Samsung. Indian tax authorities raid Chinese run companies at such a high frequency that even China has publicly complained about this [0]. This is a stunning change for a country that 4 years before was the 2nd largest FDI investor in India after the US.
> It's hard to tell what BRICS really
It's a half assed attempt at becoming a WB, ADB, or IMF competitor, but is hemmed by mutual competition between China and India. This is why the only 4 countries added in the expansion were those that had a roughly equal dependency on China and India.
> it's not a military organization so no point comparing them to NATO anyway
Agreed! I'm just dismissing a common pop fact I've noticed regurgitated on HN and Reddit. I have a hunch that the overlap between some of the more braindead subreddits and HN is quite high.
[0] - https://m.thewire.in/article/diplomacy/enforcement-directora...
What planes do the Turkish Airforce use?
What tanks, APCs, and helicopters does the Turkish Army use?
Where is most of Turkey's naval fleet manufactured?
Turkey has been working on indigenization and diversifying it's procurement by buying from Italy, Spain, and France, but it is still heavily dependent on American weapons systems.
Relations between the US and Turkiye deteriorated severely after the US began supporting the YPG (which imo was a stupid move by the Trump admin), but there is still a mutual dependency, with the US giving Turkey protection against Russia (with whom they are fighting against in a couple proxy wars like in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, etc), and the US dependent on Turkiye for Central Asia and Middle Eastern power projection.
The real world isn't a game of Civ where you are either friends or foes. In reality there exists multiple layers of grey. Furthermore, public denouncements or displays of support don't necessarily translate to positive or negative action.
A good example is Turkiye-Israel relations. Erdogan will always denounce Israel and the "Zionists", but at the end of the day, Turkey and Israel have extremely strong defense relations as both are heavily involved in Azerbaijan (Turkey because they view Azeris as brothers, and Israel because of Iran).
It's the same for US-Turkiye relations. Erdogan has to publicly appear anti-American due to his base's memories of the American supported Turkish Armed Forces violently repressing Islam until the 90s, but in actual actions, there is a mutual dependency. There's a reason why most of the younger generation of Erdogan's family attended IU Bloomington.
It's a frenemy relationship, similar to China-India in the 2012-2019 time period or Saudi and Qatar.
Aside from the S-400 purchase, which was probably done in order to build a domestic clone similar to how TAI is attempting to build the Kaan, Russia-Turkey relations are largely economic in nature. At the NatSec or defense level, they clash directly.
For example, Turkish intelligence has supported Crimean Turkish rebel groups, has supplied Ukraine with offensive UAVs for almost a decade, has shot down Russian planes (and vice versa), and directly vies with Russia in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans.
When shit hits the fan like in 2015, the US came in to mediate, though the US-Turkey relationship isn't as strong due to the Trump admin's missteps with supporting the YPG. That said, it's still a fairly strong strategic relationship, especially when compared to similar countries the US previously supported like Thailand or Malaysia, or even Greece+Cyprus and their heavy dependence on Russian weaponry (the only country in the NATO to actively buy Russian weapons until the Ukraine-Russia conflict in 2022 started).
If Incirlik was shut down, then it would absolutely be a major pivot away from the US, but the military relationship has started to recover. For example, the Turkish Air Force has been integrated under a single command with American Air Force deployments in the Middle East since 2023.